Mike Fabey of Aviation Week was afforded an authorized, guided tour of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-1), USS Freedom, that appears to be in no shape to sail. Despite Navy and contractor claims to the contrary - the ship is a rusty, rotting mess in key operational areas.

As a result of this investigation a House amendment to the Defense Authorization bill passed that demands a Government Accountability Office investigation and Comptroller review.

"A Dayton Daily News examination has found that federal agencies have awarded tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded contracts to businesses operating in Ohio that claimed to be owned and controlled by military veterans with service-related disabilities, only to conclude the companies lied to the government when they said a disabled veteran was in charge."

"After an exhaustive assessment by a McClatchy correspondent who was embedded with the unit and survived the ambush found that the Marines' official accounts of Dakota Meyer’s, the latest Medal of Honor recipient, deeds were embellished.

They're marred by errors and inconsistencies, ascribe actions to Meyer that are unverified or didn’t happen and create precise, almost novelistic detail out of the jumbled and contradictory recollections of the Marines, soldiers and pilots engaged in battle."

"Using the Freedom of Information Act, KIRO-TV (CBS-Seattle) Investigative Reporter, Chris Halsne, uncovered the never-before known cost to federal tax payers. [See document]

Defense Department records show from 2001 to 2010, the Army spent around $186,000,000 on bariatric (weight loss) surgeries. The Air Force spent nearly $75,000,000. The Navy $73,000,000. Active duty Marine wives and retirees accepted about $22,000,000 in weight loss surgeries, while Coast Guard dependents accepted around $7,000,000 worth. [See document]"

“The Sept. 11 attacks prompted almost every nation to adopt or toughen anti-terror laws. Until now, no one followed up to see who was impacted. In an unprecedented 9-month investigation, journalists in more than 100 countries found that at least 35,000 people have been convicted on terror charges since 2001, from bombers to bloggers.AP National Writer Martha Mendoza, aided by colleagues on six continents, reported the story beyond the numbers, how the war against terror is shifting to courts, and how some countries misuse their laws to curb dissent.“

As U.S. troops moved into Afghanistan in the months following 9/11, there were few facilities in place that would offer them support. As Sharon Weinberger of The Center for Public Integrity reports, “the military needed someone to do everything from housing troops to rebuilding airfields. The solution was a contract called the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or LOGCAP, a type of umbrella contract the Army had been using to support is military bases overseas.”

In 2001 the Army awarded the “LOGCAP III” to the firm KBR, which was “once a subsidiary of Halliburton.” For the next decade, KBR ...

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Melissa Taylor, McClatchy, reports on the findings of a disturbing academic research study. “A  group of law and statistics professors found that minorities in the military were twice as likely to be sentenced to death as their white counterparts, a statistic higher than is known to exist in most civilian court systems.” However, the authors of the study also stated that there is “no suggestion here that any participant in the military criminal justice system consciously and knowingly discriminated on the basis of the race of the accused or the victim”, despite the fact that there is “substantial evidence that ...

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Michael Fabey, from Aviation Week, reports on the deteriorating health of some our Navy’s ships, mostly due to budget cut backs tied with our involvement overseas.

“As conflicts were heating up in the latter years of the previous decade, the Navy shifted its funding focus from ship repair to buying items like helicopter components or combat vehicles.”

Now, as budgets tighten all across the board, the U.S. Navy needs to come up with ‘billions of dollars’ in order to keep their ships from sinking. Literally. Coming directly from the February 2010 Fleet Review Panel study- “The material readiness ...

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Michael Fabey tells the story of the "Taj Mahal," a building that "features a full-scale aft-face replica of the DDG-1000 Zumwalt-class destroyer deckhouse, complete with operating radar arrays." The U.S. Navy says the building itself costs $19 million. However, the cost of its "radar-suite" would "dwarf that number." The building was originally built to house 45 full-time employees and handle at least 60 visitors, but is now home to only three.

Caren Bohn, Mark Hoseball, Tabassum Zakaria, and Missy Ryan from Reuters report on the grueling, and sometimes questionable, plan to kill Osama bin Laden. The 13-year quest to find and eliminate bin Laden, from the November 1998 day he was indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the East Africa embassy bombings, was filled with missteps, course adjustments and radical new departures for U.S. security policy. It ultimately led to a fortified compound in a little known Pakistani city named after a long-dead British major.